1990s Critics Review Donkey Kong Land on Game Boy (Nintendo Switch Online)

I always get hyped for a new episode of Nintendo Switch Online Review Crew whenever a new NSO game drops!

QotD: DKC3, if that counts. I was going mad from all the distracting noise in the heroes of the previous 2 games because Rare couldn't be arsed to clean up their sloppy cut and paste sprites.

If I have to choose an actual Donkey Kong appearance, it's Smash Brothers Ultimate. If I can't cheat at all, let's go with DKC1.

Donkey Kong Country 1 is my favorite. it was fun without being excessively difficult. Mario vs Donkey Kong is probably #2. Yeah... you heard me. Looking forward to Donkey Kong 94 on GameBoy.

This is the first Gameboy game I ever saw. The neighbor kid had it and it blew my mind. 😝

I picked this out for my 13th birthday. I love this game. 🎉

I was pretty excited to see this one pop up yesterday! Hoping the rest of the Land trilogy will be showing up soon, too.
As for my favorite in the series? Probably Donkey Kong Country 3. I know DKC 2 is the popular pick, and I love that game, too, but something about the atmosphere, which has this vibe of isolated melancholy in a lot of the levels, just speaks to me.
Also, I love being able to freely explore around the world map and upgrade your ship to get around to new places! Guess I'm just a sucker for RPG elements xD

If we're drawing the distinction between "best" and "favorite" then Donkey Kong Country is easily my favorite.

Donkey Kong Country 3's particular atmosphere and environments made it the most engaging game for me, I was a sucker for them from nearly minute one.

As for this game, as fun as it is to see that infamous "Play It Loud" campaign (it didn't air over here), I think I'm mostly interested in seeing the new stages, the game itself seems like a hard switch to get used to over the older games. What I'm most curious over is why they're just releasing ONE single game now. My guess would be they'll release Land 2 next month, make it a dripfeed of DK games culminating in January with Donkey Kong Country Returns return to Switch, a kind of marketing drip if you will... because otherwise, an NSO release-month that's just ONE Game Boy game is real piddly. At least last year, when November also got just one game, that game was Jet Force Gemini!

Ah yes Donkey Kong Land...a game I got because I was in a local fashion show.

It's interesting so many magazines raved over DC Land, but it didn't get the cover for any.

Whoa, did Donkey Kong Land have a fish named Nemo before Disney? Disney needs to stop stealing ideas…haha

My girlfriend's favorite DK game is Donkey Kong Land, but so far she hasn't played too many. As for myself, it's Donkey Kong on GameBoy, the massively expanded remake of the original arcade game. That's no snub to the Donkey Kong Country games, though. I love them all. Looking forward to finally playing their 8-bit counterparts.

Now why does Nintendo need to trickle them in instead of giving us the whole trilogy?

The Game Boy was only like halfway through its generation though. It released in 1989 and no one else managed to compete with it until Nintendo released the GBA. That's essentially a 12 year generation and the only rival of note was the Game Gear (which still got crushed in sales) which sold over 10 million. A select for others sold like 1-4 million, but that's also about it. It took until the sony PSP and the Nintendo DS before a Nintendo handheld actually got some real competition (which still got beat quite handily in sales).

Also personally I never had a problem with DKL being fuzzy on the original GB (PAL GB with PAL game btw). Maybe I remember wrong, but it looked just fine I think.

You have not experienced hell until you have played this on original hardware

Donkey Kong Land 2 next plz Nintendo :D

DKC 2 is the best, with the best music, graphics and gameplay of all DK games

Well, I looked in my Gameboy ROMs folder, and saw I not only had Donkey Kong Land, but 2 and 3 as well. Considering my PC wouldn't have me facing the same problems of not being able to see it like it sounds like their main problem was, should be fun to check out. As for the question, I'm going to go all the way back to Old School and say the original Donkey Kong. Yeah, back when Mario was just named Jump Man. I had fun playing that old Arcade Game on MAME.

My favorite Donkey Kong game is DKC2.

well i guess i was worng. i genuinely thought the nso this month would be tetris nes version. i wonder when they release that.

well at least donkey kong has a gameboy release on the nso now.

I have the cheaper tier so I was happy to finally get an update. Thanks for covering this! I love old gaming mags and this channel.

See I like the Nintendo 64 games but I don't want to pay the $50 a year I might just stick with the lower tier and just play the Sega super Nintendo games this is why I wish they had the eShop store so we can have a choice

I haven't renewed my subscription because I think $50 a year is way too much for what you get our religious straight up by these games but I might just go to the low tier

Play it on the Switch in GBC mode, much easier to follow the action with the sprites a different color from the background (and for the game being full of prerendered gradiated graphics the GBC auto colorization works shockingly well for this game)

It's so weird and unfortunate we only getting one GB game. There's so many amazing GB games out there.

Yay discount DKC is here before the other Wario Land games 🙄

Good amount of reviews even without one from EGM. Shame they didn't drop them all like konami and capcom did with castlevania and mega man.

QOTD, Probably Tropical Freeze.

Oh these are pretty cool bananas. AAAAHH!

its not the best game even of the trilogy on the game boy, its not the snes game at all there are many very difficult spots in this game that will make you tear your hair, the old mono gb screen was horrid as at times you couldnt find your character at all, the super gb on the other hand was ok with it as the colors made the sprites pop a bit more but it was one shade of color not like other games where there was many colors and a far cry from the gbc later on, you can tell who got paid more to give better reviews as the harsher ones are more truthful

It's impressive with regards to gameboy hardware limits

It will be interesting to try this out, and hopefully soon they’ll put Donkey Kong Land 2 & 3 on NSO soon. 😄👍🏻

Astounding how the one reviewer name-drops Nemo, yet just refers to Rambi as "a Rhino." 😂

I remember thinking these were super impressive at the time. When I was a kid game boy games looked like total crap and very basic.

Meh. Land 2 and 3 were considerably better in every concievable way, including screen scale and basic visibility of gameplay elements.
Land was a necessary step towards that existing, but also made every kind of mistake this flavor of game could make. Good music, but very rough by even yesterday's standards.

I'd honestly rather see it redesigned in the SNES engine at least.

I wish we had gotten DK 94 instead. Sorely missing game.

They should have added all three donkey king land games at a time that would have been great they’re all pretty enjoyable games especially if you love the country games. If they could add those and the country gameboy advance games then we would have every dkc game on one console with the returns remaster coming out which would be awesome.

My main gripe was the same as it was in 1995. The jumping physics are very odd. Its hard to describe if you haven't played it. You jump up at a normal speed, and come back to the ground much faster.

Always a good time when these drop.

And my favorite Donkey Kong game is Donkey Kong Country 2.

Gameboy was my first video game experience. Got Kirby’s Dreamland and DK Land, when I was a kid I thought DK was too difficult lol.

DK 64 and DK original are my fave. I also like playing as Funky.......

Set days aside for videos about DK Land 3 and DK64 at this point. lol

I wanted to like it but it's too inferior to country

Donkey Kong Land is like some kind of visual sorcery.

I’m enjoying it. And on the Switch’s larger screen I don’t think it’s hard to see. Fingers crossed for DK64 eventually.

I wish the pig was an animal buddy now

DKC 2 is my favorite.